Vacation:
1 : a respite or a time of respite from something : INTERMISSION
2 a : a scheduled period during which activity (as of a court or school) is suspended b : a period of exemption from work granted to an employee
3 : a period spent away from home or business in travel or recreation <had a restful vacation at the beach>
We did it! (and yep we did that too!) LOL! After 10 years and 7 months of knowing each other, 2 pre-existing children, 5 pregnancies and 4 babies … we FINALLY spent the night together ALONE! Tomorrow will be our 10th wedding anniversary and for 6 months I have been planning this trip. Circumstances (and some stupidity) seemed to stand in the way but at the last minute things pulled together and at 4:30 am on Dec 26th, Ralph and I drove off alone. My faithful mother slept soundly between 2 of our children in our bed and only called twice in the 48 hours that we were away.
The drive down to Destin was a bit stressful. I have severe motion sickness that almost requires me to drive but after 3 hours I just couldn’t take it anymore and gladly snuggled up under my quilt for a nap. Rudely awakened 40 minutes later to that GRATING sound of the side of the highway at 60mph I quickly determined that I couldn’t trust the love of my life WITH my life if I was sleeping. Granted, he had not slept much in my 3 hours of driving and was over-tired, but STILL. I drove another 3 hours until I just couldn’t take anymore. We don’t affectionately name the inanimate objects in our lives but I think that our lovely car should now be named Old Blue. He MUST be a man for he gives no warning to times of trouble. See, Old Blue is a standard (for those of you younger and less educated in the car department, this means that he has a clutch and a stick shift that requires manual operation) and he doesn’t possess the cuff links of cruise control on his taylored shirt. The Old in his name doesn’t necessarily refer to age, since I don’t consider that 1991 was truly that LONG ago but more refers to use. At a whopping 191,920 miles he has been used beyond his years. Seems that the last 10K miles have been hard on him and he has developed a bit of an elusive leak somewhere in the clutch system. We treat him nicely and add a bit of fluid at any sign of groaning on his part. So as we are nearing 7 hours into our trip, and the first set of 14 million red lights a quarter mile apart, Old Blue decides that now is the time to forget that there IS fluid in the clutch system. This requires a constant pushing in to the floor and lifting with my big toe of said clutch until I can generously pump it to the point that the car behind me is SURE that my husband and I are being naughty at the light. This allows me the ease of putting the gear shift into first and second with a bit of normalcy but 3rd gear rolls around and mr evasive decides yet again to not work. I made it through about 3 lights before I pulled over in exasperation and said – I’d rater deal with the nausea!!!!!!
Finally arriving at our (free!) condo we decide to shower before heading out for a late lunch. The weather this week in FL decided that it should mimic the December calendar and the high for our time there was a lovely 52 degrees. (Add in an ocean breeze and I’d gather the average wind chill on the beach, midday, IN the sun, to be about 40). After a lunch at the ever NORMAL Chili’s we stopped into Barnes and Noble to pick up some leisure reading. We headed to the beach around 3pm just as the clouds started rolling in. Honestly, the wind was unbearable even under my coat, gloves AND my ever-trusty quilt. This one lonely bird was even shaking in the cold:
We grabbed a couple movies and headed back to the comfort of privacy. Again I will say …… 10 years, first time ALONE! Make of it what you will …… We had picked up some alcohol and popcorn and snuggled on the couch for Talledega Nights. Now I’m not sure if you’ve seen this movie, I’m really not sure if I recommend this movie, I don’t even know if it was a good movie, I DO however know that there were times that I laughed hard enough to cry and for the first time in a very long time I saw my husband totally relaxed. We watched all of the deleted scenes, listened to some of the dirctor commentary, watched our favorite scene (are you crawlin on the table?) a couple of times and then headed to the bedroom. We read until sleep took over and then slept alone together for the first time in over 5 years.
Wednesday morning I awoke to an awful pain and the realization that size DD cups is NOT something I will ever dream of again! I have slowly been weaning Alli but I suppose 24+ hours of no release builds up. I would have liked to used those for a bit of pleasure but the ever increasing pain along with the constant stream of milk just wasn’t a big turn-on. ah well…. We did spend the morning reading and went to a late Waffle House breakfast. Even with the sun out we decided that the wind was too much for the beach and went back for more reading and a short nap. Finally around 1 we headed to the beach fully layered and with some extra towels. This is where we sat:
(and yes, READ) for about 3 hours.
I got brave and walked in the water for awhile trying to capture a seashell or two as the ocean fought to carry them away. Of course the ocean won and managed to soak my pant legs in midst of the battle.
By this time the sun is heading to the west, the wind is again picking up and my wet clothes require us to head BACK to the condo. I threw in some laundry, had a quick shower (yet again expressing my discomfort) and dressed for a nice dinner out. Being allergic to seafood only has ONE advantage …. we don’t “do” the tourist restaurants. My allergy has been known to be aggravated sheerly by being in the presence of seafood – sad, since I used to greatly enjoy a good shrimp cocktail. We had some lovely italian at the Olive Garden and headed back to pack up. Cleaned the condo, folded and dried the laundry, changed into sweats and climbed in the car at 9pm. It was a grueling drive home since my (legally blind in the day and much more so at night) eyes just couldn’t handle the stress of driving and I was too scared to even doze after my husbands incident on the way down. We rolled into our driveway at 4:35am. *YAWN* My BLESSED Mother left immediately, hoping to catch some ZZZZ’s in her own comfy bed. Sadly, my SIL (wife to my older brother and mother to my two beautiful neices, one of which is barely a month old) lost her father to death this week and my parents needed to head out on a road trip of comfort.
For those who have followed my blog I’m sure the biggest question you have is …Did you talk? How’s your marriage now? Did he take THE GAME?
Well, he didn’t take the game along (THANK GOD!) but he did buy a novel about a character in the game and he was completely enthralled by it the entire time. Our marriage has no changes. I did try to have some conversation on the drive home but that was met with a bit of sarcasam (my goal for 5 years from now is to have 6 level 70 characters, etc, etc) and mostly no response. He is happy. His reasoning for our lack of “romance/love/communication” is from the sheer number of children we are raising. He NEEDS an outlet, a hobby, that will allow him to still be home and I should be thankful. ….sigh…. So, I guess I will be.
Thankful.
Alone.
Blessed to have a man who says that he still loves his wife of 10 years.
Blessed to have children that were happy for me to come home.
Blessed to have friends who give me my own outlet.
Thankful
….and sad.
Respect after Divorce 